REVIEW: ‘Clash Of The Titans’
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RCC Rating: Worth Watching On DVD |
Louis Leterrier’s remake of “Clash Of The Titans” is a decent, straight-up action flick. The less you know about the 1981 film it’s based off of, the better. The less you know about Greek mythology the better. The fewer dimensions you see it in, the better. In fact, let’s just break the discussion of the movie into three parts. We’ll start with the movie, at face value.
Sam Worthington plays Perseus, adopted at birth by a fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite) after he’s found floating in the sea in a coffin along with his dead mother. After witnessing the desecration of a large statue of Zeus by soldiers of Argos, Perseus’ adopted family is killed as collateral damage in retaliation by Zeus’ brother, Hades (Ralph Fiennes). As the only survivor of the attack, the folks in Argos figure out Perseus is a demi-god, the son of Zeus and therefore immortal. The fine folks in Argos are dead-set on turning their backs on the gods of Olympus, until Hades convinces Zeus (Liam Neeson) to release the Kraken on their blaspheming asses, unless they sacrifice the princess Andromeda (Alexa Davelos) to the sea beastie in ten days. Perseus, not too thrilled with the gods himself after the death of his family, sets out on a quest to find a way to defeat the Kraken. He’s guided along the way by Io (Gemma Arterton), a mysterious woman who has watched over Perseus his whole life.
The remainder of the movie has Perseus and a few Argos soldiers battling Calibos (Jason Flemyng), the deposed king who was punished by Zeus for murdering the woman Zeus had relations with; giant scorpions that spring out of Calibos’ blood; and Medusa, the Gorgon who can turn you to stone with just one glance. It all builds up with a date with the Kraken, a massive undulating sea baddie that gets… released.
And yes, Virginia, the fight sequences are pretty well done. The CG and fight choreography are all state of the art, and a far cry from what Ray Harryhausen was able to accomplish in 1981, when the stop-motion animation was top-notch for its time. My biggest problem with the action was that it seemed a little bloodless. Even when the band of adventurers were in grave peril, even when members of the traveling party are getting killed off (guess they were wearing red tunics), there’s not a lot of drama to it. You’re only caring about Perseus and Draco, the cynical Argos general, because you know the remainder are scorpion food. The film lurches on from fight scene to fight scene, with little time for exposition or explanation.
A good thing, too, because this version of “Clash Of The Titans” plays it incredibly fast and loose with the Greek mythology it’s supposedly based on. Anyone who sat through half a semester of the stuff in high school will be looking sideways at the screen and asking questions like “What the hell is Io doing in this movie?”, or “Why is Hades making a power play here, when he has nothing to do with the Perseus myth?” (We’ll leave out the obvious question, “Why does Perseus have an Australian accent?” because we’re used to the answer: “After a while, the dialogue coach must have gotten tired.”) This version of “Clash Of The Titans” shoves a half-dozen Greek myths into a blender, hits “puree” and pours it out onto a script book. Again: if you don’t know any better, then the use of the different characters work fine. The more you know, the stronger your reaction.
Now, let’s talk about the 3D, the element of the movie that single-handedly makes me want to release my own Kraken. I’m willing to wager Louis Leterrier had no desire to make “Clash” a 3D movie, because it’s not set up to be one. The decision by Warner Brothers to convert this into a 3D film is nothing more than a cash-grab, plain and simple. It ruins the action sequences, particularly the scorpion attacks and the final Kraken set piece, because it’s so damned choppy and disjointed that the eye can’t correctly track the focus of the scene. Additionally, the 3D used to bring depth to the people on-screen makes it look like they’re paper cut-outs. 3D done correctly immerses you in the scene, gives the viewer an added incentive to get invested in the movie. By converting a 2D movie to be shown in 3D improperly, all the studios are doing is setting the technique back to the Eighties, when it was a gimmick and nothing more.
I would like to go back and see this movie again in 2D, just to see if it makes as much of a difference as I believe it will. Until then, if you want to throw money needlessly towards theaters that have jacked up 3D prices by ten percent in the last month, for an inferior product… do so at your own peril.
